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Era of the Normans
The Era of the Normans lasted from about 1000 AD until 1095 AD. It began with reign of King Ethelred the Unready of England, which would set in motion the events leading to the Norman conquest of England. It then ended on the eve of the Crusading Age. The Early Middle Ages laid the foundation of Western civilisation, but it can also be seen as a long period of slumber for the West. This lethargy was shaken in the 11th-century by a new sense of self-confidence, exemplified by the Normans. These descendants of Vikings settled in Northern France, where they took to French feudalism, Christianity, language, customs, legal system, and warfare. Within a few generations, the Dukes of Normandy had been transformed into one of the most powerful magnates in France, and possibly the most ferocious military forces in Europe. If the Normans inherited one trait from the Viking forefathers, perhaps it was wanderlust: in 1066, William the Conqueror crossed the Channel to conquered Anglo-Saxon England. The Western Christian Church too had a new aggressive attitude. Under a series of great reforming popes, beginning with Leo IX (1049-54), the Church standardised clerical practices and vigorously cracked-down on corruption. The long developing estrangement between eastern and western Christendom finally resulted in the Great Schism of 1054, the permanent breach between the Catholic and Eastern Orthodox Churches. Meanwhile, for these reforming popes, the continued subordination of the Church to secular rulers was not their intention, prompting the first great clash of the protected medieval power struggle between Church and state, the Investiture Controversy (1076-1122). There thus emerged the more uncompromising and militant form of Christianity that would increasingly characterise Europe between the late-11th and 13th centuries. It also provided a licence for the predatory appetites of the military class; they could spoil the Muslim with clear consciences. Again the Normans were in the vanguard, taking Sicily from the Arabs, as well as swallowing the last Byzantine possessions in southern Italy; they would also provided much of the firepower of the First Crusade. The Spaniards too had come to see the Reconquista as a religious cause. History Europe in 11th Century In the year 1000, there were few signs of the astonishing success that European civllisation would enjoy in the second millennium. In fact, most Europeans weren't even aware of the turn of the millennium, for counting by years from the supposed birth of Christ was by no means yet the rule; most used regnal years as in the 4th year of the reign of Robert II of France. It would even seem at a glance that little had been accomplished since the fall of the Western Roman Empire. This was a world of very slow population growth; only approximate estimates can be made but they suggest that a Europe of about thirty million people in 500 AD, grew to forty million by 1000. This was still an overwhelmingly rural society with few urban centres, none of which could approached in magnificence Constantinople, Córdoba, or Baghdad; all had populations of around half-a-million, while Paris and London remained disease ridden firetraps with barely 25,000. The little literacy and learning that there was, was virtually a monopoly of the Christian Church; far into the Middle Ages, even kings were normally illiterate. There was also relatively little commerce, little government control, and violence was simply an accepted part of life. Nevertheless, as it turned out, the Vikings and Hungarians were the last of the wave of pagan invaders that Europe would endure; or at least Western Europe because the East would still have to deal with the Mongols in the 13th-century. These more settled conditions allowed the tremendous period of growth that the West would enjoy in the High Middle Age (1000-1337); an expansion of the population, urbanisation, and economy, as well as artistic, political, and intellectual creativity. The great achievement of the Early Middle Ages was Christendom itself. With the conversions of Scandinavia, Hungary, Russia, Bulgaria, and the Slavs, it was beginning to encompass the entire continent. Although Europe was and would remain a diverse collection of disunited states, Christendom provided a shared cultural area, where political alliances and trade networks could flourish. Diversity and rivalry would come to seem as often a benefit rather than a hindrance. Meanwhile, Christianity also provided the religious motivation for the tentative beginnings of expansion, with the Crusading Age in the Holy Lands and the Reconquista in Spain. Christian Church in 11th Century During the Early Middle Age, the Christian Church had made great advances, with Christianity spreading into Scandinavia, Hungary, Bulgaria, Poland, and Russia, as well as among the Slavs. Yet, it was also finding it increasingly difficult to maintain moral excellence at all times of material temptations. By the 9th-century, the Church had become inseparable from the feudal system. Bishops of cities and abbots of monasteries were great landowners, putting them on a social par with the noble elites. Enormous feudal wealth and power was attached to these high offices, and more and more their appointments was the purview of kings and the more powerful feudal lords; notably in the Germanic Holy Roman Empire, but the practice was common throughout Europe. These high ecclesiastical offices became thus the almost exclusive domain of members of the great feudal families. Bishoprics were openly bought and sold (known as simony), or even passed from father to son with the lax enforcement of clerical celibacy. Meanwhile, churches and monasteries had suffered greatly from the Viking raids especially in Britain and France, and at every level discipline and learning were in decline. Some in the Church were appalled by this moral decline in the clergy, and general subservience to secular rulers. In Burgundy, a group of earnest clerics were able to convince William I of Aquitane (d. 918) to found Cluny monastery in 910. The monastery also received the right to elect its own abbot, putting the position beyond secular interference. Four of the first eight abbots of Cluny were later canonised; seven of them were outstanding men. Its monks were strict adherence to the Rule of St. Benedict, and attained a high level of sustainable piety and discipline, combining communal prayer services with fieldwork and manuscript reproduction. Cluniac monasteries proliferated throughout France and Western Europe, all ruled by priors subordinate to the abbot of Cluny itself in order to maintain unity of practice. For nearly two-and-a half-centuries it would be the heart of reform in the Church. Meanwhile, with Italy a crowded hodgepodge of rival petty states, the archbishop of Rome was invariably appointed based not on their piety, but on their skills as a secular ruler, in order to protect the Papal State. In fact, when the Germanic Holy Roman Emperors deposed popes and installed replacements, they were more often than not far better candidates than these morally corrupt power seekers. One such Pope, appointed by Henry III of Imperial Germany, was Leo IX (1049-54), the first of a series of great reforming popes. Leo was a man of immense reforming zeal, who spent barely six months of his five years as pontiff in Rome. Instead he moved from synod to synod, imposing standard clerical practices, punishing transgressions, and checking on secular interference. This is when clerical celibacy became more common and more widespread. He also established the College of Cardinals as any advisory body, which he stacked with fellow reformers. It was his good fortune that the next two papal elections occurred during the minority of Henry IV of Germany, allowing the College to firmly establish its central role in future nominations of Popes. Another significant event of Leo's papacy was the Great Schism of 1054 between the Western Catholic and Eastern Orthodox Churches. On 16 July 1054, the Pope excommunicated the archbishop of Constantinople, and a week later the Pope was excommunicated in return. The direct cause of the schism is convoluted and seemingly trivial. The Churches had in fact been drifting apart for centuries. While the Pope saw himself as the Vicar of Christ, the leader of Christendom on earth, the Patriarch in Constantinople usually considered him little more than the first among equals of the five great bishoprics (Rome, Constantinople, Jerusalem, Antioch, and Alexandria). The Pope's claim was in part based on a document known as the Donation of Constantine; today recognised as one of the greatest forgeries in history. As early as the 6th-century, when Justinian reconquered Italy, there were those who pointed out that it felt more like a foreign invasion than a rescue. In the 7th-century, the efforts of the Eastern Church to accommodate her Monophysite minority were not supported by the West, leading to tiny theological differences between the Churches which grew. Then in the 8th and 9th centuries, the Iconoclastic Controversy declaring religious art as idolatry drove the first real wedge between the Churches, poisoning relations and opening the sluice-gate of excommunications and counter-excommunications. To put it simply, the Eastern and Western Churches simply facing different political realities, gradually evolving differently, and allowing minor divergences to harden into an irreconcilable rifts. By the 10th-century, the two had clearly become rivals for influence especially in Eastern Europe, with Rome winning Hungary, Constantinople winning Bulgaria etc. All that was needed to bring the Great Schism about was archbishops in Rome and Constantinople with strong enough personalities. At the time, probably neither man expected the schism would be permanent, but the rift was ultimately sealed a century-and-a-half later when the Crusaders sacked Constantinople in 1204; it remains to today, although the mutual excommunications were formally lifted in 1965, marking a reconciliation between the two Churches. For the reforming popes who followed Leo, the continued subordination of the Catholic Church to the Holy Roman Emperor was not their intention. This prompted the first great clash of the protected medieval power struggle between Church and state, the Investiture Controversy (1076-1122). The clash with Henry IV of Germany was followed by similar turmoil in England over Thomas Becket in the 12th-century, and would culminating in the struggle with King Philip IV of France in the 13th-century. The new aggressive stance of the papacy led to the more uncompromising and militant form of Christianity that would characterise Europe between the 11th and 13th centuries, reaching its zenith in the two-century long Crusading Age. Rise of the Normans In Normandy, the descendants of Rollo's Vikings and their French wives faced an uncertain future, surrounded by predatory neighbours especially powerful and ambitious Flanders, and with the French crown always looking for an excuse to reclaim her lost territory. The duchy was put on firmer footing during the long reign of the third duke, Richard I (942-96). His early reign was troubled. King Louis IV tried to invade twice to drive-off the barbarians, only retreating the second time when Richard invited some Vikings to pillage the Seine Valley until the king got the message. But for the rest of his reign, he was able to concentrate on turning their newly settled land into a fully functioning medieval state. Richard was also a key supporter of the election of Hugh Capet (987-996), his brother-in-law, to the French throne. It was under the fourth duke, Richard II (996–1026), that the Normans fully gained their identity. While his predecessors aspired to be seen as one of the great lords of France, they still allowed Viking raiders to use the Norman ports for overwintering and selling their booty; their fellow nobles called them the Duke of the Pirates. In 1002, Richard closed the ports to the Vikings, in an agreement with King Ethelred II of England who married his sister Emma. Meanwhile, he commissioned a pro-French version of the history of the duchy, propaganda at its finest, portraying his ancestors as morally upright Christian leaders who built Normandy despite the treachery of their overlords and neighbours. He was also a great patron of the Cristian Church, restoring their lands and ensuring the great monasteries flourished, especially Le Mont-Saint-Michel which would become one of the most spectacular examples of Norman architecture. By the time Richard died, he had turned around the perception of Normandy, and provided the foundations for the great heights yet to come. His son, Robert I (1027-35), expanded Norman influence, intervening in a civil war in Flanders turning it into a nominal vassal, and did the same in Brittany. When a palace coup forced young King Robert II of France (996-1031) into exile, Normandy helped restore him to the throne. The Dukes were now one of the most powerful magnates in France. Thus the Normans had successfully reinvented themselves In just over the century, going from raiding to government, and replacing pagan shrines with churches. To their inherited traits as hardened Vikings, they had added French heavy cavalry warfare, turning them into possibly the most ferocious military forces in Europe; their armoured knight charges were virtually irresistible. As they sharpened their military skills, they were also learning how to consolidate power, through the building of motte-and-bailey castles, as bases for attack and then the defence of captured land. With this wonderful machine for conquest, Robert's son would become the most famous Norman in history, William the Conqueror. If the Normans inherited one trait from the Viking forefathers perhaps it was wanderlust, for Norman adventurers would be found all over Europe from Italy to the Holy Lands. Norman Conquest of England It was only when ability finally failed in the line of Alfred the Great, during the reign of Ethelred II (978-1013), that the newly consolidated Anglo-Saxon England came to grief again. The situation in England between about 925 and 980 had remained relatively stable, and trade was prospering, with London and the former Viking capital of York in particular thriving centres of international trade. However, this success didn't go unnoticed, attracting yet another wave of Viking raids beginning about 980 and steadily increasing in intensity. Following a resounding English defeated at Battle of Maldon (August 991), Ethelred began to pay an immense annual bribe of Danegeld to the Vikings. Almost inevitably, it tended to attract future raiders rather than discourage them. The judgement of early historians was less than flattering, and he has been known as Ethelred the Unready ever since, somewhat unfairly since such payments had been common practice for at least a century, even by Alfred himself. The Vikings often used the ports of their cousins in Normandy to overwinter and sell their booty. By 1002, Ethelred was desperate to close them, and agreed to marry Emma, the sister of the Duke Richard II of Normandy. However, this diplomatic triumph seemed to go straight to his head, and he soon ordered a surprise massacre some of the many Danes living in England; the St. Brice's Day Massacre (1002). The eventual response came in 1013, when a Danish army invaded England under King Sweyn Forkbeard of Denmark (986-1014). With Ethelred deeply unpopular, there was little real resistance and by the end of the year the Dane was sitting on the English throne, within the wider Scandinavian Empire; since Sweyn, the son of Harald Bluetooth, was a Christian he was not met with the usual suspicion accorded to a Viking. Ethelred, his wife Emma, and his younger sons fled into exile in Normandy. Ethelred was recalled to England when Sweyn’s death in 1014, but with some difficulty, Sweyn's son Cnut the Great (1016-35) was eventually accepted as king of England. To shore up his legitimacy, Cnut married Ethelred’s widow, Emma of Normandy. Thus emerged the complex family links between Anglo-Saxons, Normans and Danes. Ethelred's natural son, the future King Edward the Confessor, had Cnut as a stepfather and Richard II of Normandy as an uncle. Cnut ruled England effectively for thirteen years, preserving the Anglo-Saxon nobility and encouraging intermarriage between the Danes and English. He also went on claim the crowns of Norway and parts of Sweden too. With such a vast realm, Cnut naturally delegated considerable power to trusted nobles, notably Earl Godwin of Wessex who grew both powerful and the wealthiest man in the country. On his death, Cnut was succeeded not surprisingly by his own two natural sons, but they were both short-lived, and the crowneventually passed to his native Anglo-Saxon stepson, Edward the Confessor (1042-66). Edward had spent a quarter of a century living in exile in Normandy throughout the reigns of Cnut and his sons. His reign was dominated by infighting between the king and the powerful Godwin family, with Edward bringing many Normans into his English administration to try and undermine his troublesome Earl, although in the end they were reconciled. Yet, Edward failed to produce an heir, and died in January 1066; he was buried in the abbey he had commissioned, Westminster Abbey. His death brought about a succession crisis in England. On his deathbed, Edward had declared that the crown would go to Earl Harold Godwinson of Wessex. However, there were two other powerful rulers with strong claims to the English throne: King Harald Hardrada of Norway based on an agreement with Cnut's sons to restore Scandinavian rule in England; and Duke William of Normandy, the cousin of Edward through his great-aunt Emma of Normandy. The succession of any medieval ruler was always an invitation to chaos, and the early reign of eight-year-old William the Conqueror (1035-87) as Duke of Normandy more than most. Power in Normandy rested on a tamed aristocracy, but during William's minority his relatives and other ambitious knights saw their chance to grab power for themselves, while treating the young duke as a pawn or a target for assassination. Normandy gradually descended into anarchy. When William reached his fifteenth-year in 1042, he began to play a full part in the affairs of his duchy, surrounding himself with young and talented knights and advisors, who would stay with him for the rest of his life; many would eventually become some of the largest landowners in England. And King Henry I of France continued to support young William, doubtless hoping for a weak duke propped-up by royal power. Together William and Henry defeated a major rebellion led by Guy of Burgundy at the Battle of Val-ès-Dunes (1047). Victory at Val-ès-Dunes was the making of the young duke, and afterwards he gradually set about restoring order to the Norman state, as well as its power, prestige, and wealth. By the 1050s, William was able to participate in events outside his duchy. His marriage in 1051 to Matilda of Flanders, a formidable character in her own right, brought him a powerful ally; uncharacteristically for a Norman duke, he would remain faithful to her his whole life. In 1052, he invaded the county of Maine to the south, in support of King Henry and his quarrel with the Count of Anjou; it was formally annexed into Normandy in 1062. However, alliances quickly shifted in feudal Europe, and in 1057 the king and the Count of Anjou invaded Normandy determined to bring the upstart duke to heel. However they were defeated by William at the Battle of Varaville. Three years later in 1060, with a child Philip I of France (1060-1108) on the throne, William was finally secure both within his own duchy and free from external threats. It is not surprising that William emerged from these trials as a formidable personality, as well as a brilliant and often savage military commander. He was now finally free to turn his attention to a yet greater prize, England, one of the biggest and most centralised states in Western Europe. In 1066, William of Normandy pressed his own claim to the English throne, as a cousin of Edward the Confessor. He also claimed that when Harold Godwinson was in Normandy to secure the release of his imprisoned brother, he had sworn an oath on holy relics to support William’s claim to the crown. William immediately began preparing for an invasion of England, building 400 ships to ferry 10,000 knights and horses across the Channel. In England, King Harold Godwinson deployed his army on the south coast in readiness for William's invasion. The invasion of England finally came in September 1066, but not from Normandy. King Harald Hardrada of Norway invaded northern England to press his own claim to the English throne. He soon defeated the local earls, and captured York. Harold Godwinson immediately marched his army north, covering the 200 miles in an astonishing four days, and catching the Norwegian army completely by surprise. At the Battle of Stamford Bridge (September 1066), Harald along with most of the Norwegians were killed; only 24 of the original 240 ships were required to carry away the survivors. This battle is sometimes used to mark the end of the Viking Age. However, Harald had little time to savoir the victory. Just three days later, William of Normandy landed his own invasion force unopposed on the south coast, after a string of delays. Before the army was carried the same holy relics upon which Harold had supposedly sworn in Normandy. Repeating his epic march, the exhausted Harold Godwinson was back in London within four days to plan the defence of the realm. On Saturday 14 October 1066, a single battle between less than 20,000 men permanently changed the course of English history, the Battle of Hastings (October 1066). The English were lined up on foot in a heavy infantry shield wall, the traditional way of fighting, tried and tested over the centuries. Confronting them was something startlingly new in English warfare, the Norman mounted cavalry charge. The battle lasted the entire day, with Harold's men holding the line until repeated Norman charges began to take their tole; William himself had three horse cut from under him. In the late afternoon, a chance arrow killed Harold Godwinson; according to the Bayeux Tapestry hitting him in the eye. When Harold's standard fell, the end came quickly, with the wall breaking and a route ensuing. In the aftermath, the Normans met little resistance on their march to London, where William the Conqueror (1066-87) was crowned king of England on Christmas Day in Westminster Abbey. The new church had had an eventful first year, with a royal funeral and two coronations. William secured his new kingdom with exemplary thoroughness. Within weeks the English landscape was being transformed by the construction of hundreds of wooden motte-and-bailey castles, unlike anything seen in England before. Traditional Anglo-Saxon fortifications were walled towns and villages to shelter the people from attack. Norman castles were compact military bases designed to defend the power of the new ruling class and intimidate the local community; a militarisation of England. Many of these castles would later be replaced by monumental towers of stone, such as the massive White Tower to defend the capital; now the heart of the Tower of London. Nevertheless, resistance continued for several years: Harold's sons fled into exile in Ireland, and tried several times to invade; a cousin of Edward the Confessor fled into exile in Scotland and stirred up trouble to the north; and guerilla fighters like the legendary Hereward the Wake repeatedly tried to throw-off the "Norman Yoke". The stiffest Anglo-Saxon resistance was in the north, and it took two years of ruthless oppression to bring it under William's control; the Harrying of the North (1069–71). Nevertheless by 1080, the Norman conquest of England was celebrated as a fait accompli by the commissioning of the magnificent Bayeux Tapestry. Meanwhile, good administration required efficient taxation and detailed information about the country, thus William commissioned his most famous work. A vast census of the kingdom colloquially known a the ''Domesday Book ''(1086), a''n allusion to the ''Day of Judgement because the commissioners’ findings were final. Domesday reveals the scale to which the Anglo-Saxon ruling class were almost entirely dispossessed. The king and his family possessed about 20% of the land in England, 25% was in the hands of the Christian Church, 50% by Norman and French lords, thus leaving a bare 5% to the surviving Anglo-Saxon nobility. Some Anglo-Saxon nobles fled to Scotland, such as Margaret of Wessex who married the Scottish king, and worked to transform it into something strong enough to resist conquest from the south. Throughout his reign, William was considered a foreign tyrant by his English subject. Seemingly the feeling was reciprocated. William never bothered to learn the language, and spent as much time as he dared at home in Normandy. On his death, he left to his eldest son his favourite part of the realm, the Duchy of Normandy, while the throne of England went to his younger son. Efficient administration of the country continued under William's two sons, William II (1087-1100) and Henry I (1100-1135). His sons worked harder to smooth the differences between Anglo-Saxon and Norman societies; Henry himself married an Anglo-Saxon princess. It was often a harsh rule, but there was also a sense of fair dealing. A charter of liberties was issued on the accession of Henry I that sought to bind the king to certain laws regarding the treatment of his nobles and church officials; it can be seen as a precursor of Magna Carta a century later. Nevertheless, royal authority was absolute, governed through a growing system of administration: king's judges were sent around the country to hear cases, known as circuit court judges; and royal income was collected and audited twice a year on a checkered counting cloth, from which derives the modern term Chancellor of the Exchequer. Towns and cities flourished, and many received new privileges based on continental practice. The Church also benefited in many ways from closer connections with the continent, such as the arrival of the first reforming Cluniac monastery, established at Lewes in 1077. The Norman kings and their nobles conducted court in French, something that would endured in England for centuries. Thousands of French words would eventually enter the English language, which is why the modern language has so many different words for the same thing, such as royal from the French and king from the Old English, or amorous from the French and loving from the Old English. An obvious indication of how thoroughly the Normans overwrote Anglo-Saxon culture is that Saxon names such as Egbert, Athelstan, and Ethelred today appear unusual, while Norman names like William, Henry, and Richard seem quintessentially English. Gradually the cultural differences between Normans and Anglo-Saxons evaporated: in 911, when the Normans arrived in France, they were Vikings; in 1066, when they invaded England, they were Frenchmen; and in 1169 when they would invade Ireland they were Englishmen. The direct line of William the Conquerors only lasted his two sons. When Henry's son and the heir apparent died in 1020 the inheritance was thrown into doubt, and when Henry finally died in 1035 England descended into a period of civil war known as The Anarchy. Meanwhile, Henry I had reunited his fathers realm in 1106, overthrowing his brother in Normandy. The Duke of Normandy had always been the vassal of the French king, and the fact that they were kings of England in their own rights didn't change that. When the French monarchy began to reassert itself in the 13th-century, it would spark a century long war to evict the English from French soil; the Hundred Years’ War. Norman Conquest of Southern Italy Viewed on the map, the Italian peninsula with Sicily at her toe, protected from mainland Europe by the Alps, and with access to the sea on all other sides, seems a natural location for a single kingdom; or the secure heart of an empire as it was in Roman time. Yet, its geographical position had had precisely the opposite effect. Constantly nibbled at by its neighbours, by the 9th century, Italy was a crowded and ever-shifting hodgepodge of rival states; Italy would in fact not be politically unified until 1870. The north was officially part of the Germanic Holy Roman Empire. The south was a mix of the remnants of Justinian's Byzantine holdings, minor Lombard duchies, and Muslim Sicily. There was only one fairly stable element, the Papal State of Rome and Ravenna. The anarchy of chaotic rivalries that prevailed for much of the 10th and 11th centuries, were further fueled by religious fervor with the clash of Western Catholicism, Eastern Orthodoxy and Islam. This chaos had a profound effect on the region. It caused the more important cities in Italy to begin enclosing themselves in strong walls and to adopt an increasingly independent stance; the Italian City-States. The earliest was the Republic of Venice which broke-away from the Byzantine Empire in 726 in the midst of the tumultuous Iconoclasm Controversy. Others followed her example: Amalfi (958), Genoa (1005), Pisa (1005), Florence (1115), Milan (1117), Siena (1125) and many others. The government of these cities was taken into the hands of the leading citizens, resulting in the extremely effective Italian oligarchies usually referred to as communes. The first of Italy's medieval cities to prosper are those which grow rich through maritime trade, the Maritime Republics of Venice, Genoa, and Pisa. They built great fleets both for their own protection and to support extensive trade networks across the Mediterranean. Venice, perfectly placed between the Holy Roman Empire and the Eastern Mediterranean, made her fortune through skillfully negotiated favourable trade treaties with the Byzantine Empire, which was enjoying an economic boom during the Macedonian Dynasty (867-1025). Genoa and Pisa, by contrast, were strengthened through conflict, working in alliance to wrestle control of the Western Mediterranean from the Fatimid Muslims. The fortunes of these cities increased considerably from the Crusading Age, providing transport and support but most especially taking advantage of the political and trading opportunities resulting from these wars. Commercial rivalry between Venice and the declining Byzantine Empire, would eventually lead to the infamous Fourth Crusade and the sack of Constantinople in 1204. By the 12th and 13th centuries, the Italian City States were some of the richest and most cosmopolitan cities in Europe, with a unique social and political structure. They would play a crucial role in the development of banking and international finance, as well as spurring the Renaissance from the 14th century. The volatile situation in Italy was also a golden opportunity for mercenaries, many of them Normans; Normandy had little to offer the younger sons of minor noble families. From the early 11th-century, Normans arrived in southern Italy in ever greater numbers, fighting on all sides, though the Lombards usually made the most generous employers. The Norman conquest of southern Italy is all the more remarkable for being largely the work of a single family, that of a simple knight called Tancred de Hauteville. Virtually nothing is known about Tancred other than the fact that he had twelve sons. The eldest brother William made his reputation fighting first for the Byzantines against Muslims, then for the Lombards against the Byzantines, and by 1042 had carved out a tiny territory around Melfi. Another Norman adventurer added the principality of Aversa in 1049. With each success bringing ever more recruits, the Norman soon gained a reputation for rapaciously squeezing their provinces for every drop of money. By 1053, tales of rape, murder and robbery provoked a response from the most powerful figure in Italy, Pope Leo IX. He pulled together the scattered powers of Italy to drive off the Normans. At the Battle of Civitate (June 1053), Leo not only suffered a crushing defeat but was taken captive. The Pope was treated with every deference, but was no less a hostage of the Normans; the Normans' faith rarely got in the way of their driving ambition. He was held for nine months until he acknowledged the Norman's conquests. With their position secure and the Byzantines in severe decline, one town after another submitted to the Normans, and those that resisted were either overwhelmed or fell prey to clever ruses. The last Byzantine stronghold, the city of Bari, fell to them in 1071, bringing all of southern Italy under their control; also ending forever the presence of the Roman Empire on Italian shores. By this stage, the Normans had already begun the conquest of Muslim Sicily (1061-91). Sicily was ripe for conquest at the time, with the island divided between warring Arab and Moorish factions. A foothold was first established at Messina in 1061, and Muslim resistance effectively broken at the Battle of Cerami (June 1063). Yet it was a slow and gruelling campaign: the great city of Palermo fell in 1072; Syracuse capitulated in 1086; and the conquest of Sicily was complete when Noto yielded In February 1091. The Norman conquest of southern Italy and Sicily was unplanned and disorganised, with many territories conquered independently as separate duchies and counties, and even the de Hauteville brothers had constantly quarreled among themselves. It was only later that a unified kingdom was brought together as a single kingdom under Roger II (1130-54), the grandson of Tancred of Hauteville. Roger, raised in cosmopolitan Sicily, was practical rulers, and continued the Muslim practice of religious tolerance for all faiths. The cultural melting-pot of Sicily would play an important part in the development of Western Europe. It became a centre of learning, producing such wonders as the Tabula Rogeriana ''(1154), the most accurate map of the world until the Age of Discovery, containing accounts of everything from the caste system of India and rice cultivation in China. Her sophisticated Muslim administrative structure was kept largely in place, and would later be studied by Holy Roman Emperor Frederick II to establish the first true professional bureaucracy in Western Europe since the fall of the Western Roman Empire. Meanwhile, though the primary inspiration behind the Crusades was undoubtedly religious fervour, the example of the kingdom carved-out in southern Italy by a few thousand Norman knights of lowly birth did not go unnoticed. Imperial Germany and the Church The Germanic Holy Roman Empire consolidated under Otto the Great (d. 973), remained largely unified until 1125, even if somewhat idiosyncratic: strong regional rivallies especially between the four great duchies of Bavaria, Swabia, Saxony, and Franconia; and it retained the practice of an elected monarch, so imperial authority rested on the political manipulation of powerful magnates. The Saxon Ottonian Dynasty (919-1002), was followed by the Bavarian Henry II (1002-24), and then the Franconian Salian Dynasty (1024-1125). These emperors blurred the Charlemagne's idea of protecting of the Christian Church into domination, regarding the imperial crown as a mandate to even control the papacy: bishops and abbots were appointed directly by the emperor as a means of asserting imperial authority over the realm, and even Popes were dismissed at will and replaced with candidates more to their liking. In the wake of a series of great reforming Popes, beginning with Leo IX (1049-54), the continued subordination of the Church to the Holy Roman Emperor was not their intention. At the heart of reform lay the ideal of an independent Church. The battle lines of this first medieval clash between Church and state were clearly drawn under Pope Nicholas II (1059-61). At a synod in Rome in 1059, Nicholas issued a decree regulating the conduct of papal elections, so that the College of Cardinals alone could choose a pope. Imperial influence was clearly his target, for the emperor was left with a theoretical veto and no more. He also took steps to protect the papacy, by allying with the Normans of southern Italy, just six years after Pope Leo IX had attempted to drive them off. The new aggressive stance of the Catholic Church was fully embodied in '''Pope Gregory VII' (1073-85) whose spectacular quarrel with Holy Roman Emperor Henry IV (1056-1105) has gone down in history as the Investiture Controversy '''(1076-1122). Gregory was a far from attractive as a person, a lover of decisive action without too nice a regard for possible consequences, but a pope of great personal and moral courage. At issue was who had the authority to appoint bishops and abbots within imperial Germany, the Pope or the Emperor. The appointment of high clergy was too valuable a right to be easily relinquished by any secular rulers; great feudal wealth and power was attached to these offices. After issuing his decree on lay investiture, Gregory excommunicated some of the emperor’s clerical councillors accusing them of simony, and to cap matters summoned the emperor to appear before him and defend himself against charges of misconduct. Henry responded at first through the Church itself; appointing a new bishop of Milan, when another clergyman had already been chosen by the pope; and getting a German synod to declare Gregory deposed. This earned the emperor himself excommunication, which would have mattered less had the nobles across imperial Germany not seize this opportunity to rise in widespread revolt; the Great Saxon Revolt (1077-88). The end result was that Henry had to give way. In one of the most dramatic of all confrontations of secular and spiritual authority, Henry came in humiliation to Canossa, where he waited in the snow barefoot until Gregory would receive his penance. But Gregory had not really won, his position was too extreme. William the Conqueror of England and Philip II of France made it clear they would not refrain from investing bishops with their offices, while the German rebels felt betrayed by Gregory and ceased support for him. Once the revolts were under control in 1081, Henry marched on Rome, which he besieged for three years, before entering with his own Pope. In exile, Gregory appealed to the Normans to restore him to the papacy. The imperial forces withdrew from the city before they arrived, and the Normans, seeing Rome defenseless, sacked and looted the city so violently that Gregory lost all credibility; he died still in exile less than a year later. Though Gregory's immediate successors acted less dramatically than he, the Investiture Controversy ran-on as an issue for several decades, with occasional compromises made on both sides, particularly in the Concordat of Worms (1122); Worms established a subtle distinction between the spiritual and secular elements of high clerical appointments. Though diplomatically disguised, it was clearly a papal victory; the Church would henceforth be an independent institution. The Investiture Controversy proved just the first of a series of medieval clashes between Church and state, including a spectacular quarrel in England over clerical privilege and immunity from the law of the land; it provoked the murder and then the canonization of Thomas Becket, the archbishop of Canterbury. Throughout the 11th and 12th centuries, Popes would put strong claims to secular as well as spiritual supremacy of the papacy, and intervened incessantly in foreign affairs, most spectacularly in the Crusades. This aggressive stance of the papacy would last until another dramatic clash between Pope Boniface VIII and King Philip IV of France in the 13th-century. Meanwhile in imperial Germany, the long struggle with the papacy greatly weakened the authority of the Holy Roman Emperors. Internal revolts and the lack of strong kings allowed feudalism to spread without the monarchy able to keep control of it. In the coming centuries, Germany would fragment into a tapestry of innumerable small states, with the emperor as little more than a figurehead; Germany would in fact not be politically unified until 1871 through the statesmanship of Otto von Bismarck. The Spanish Reconquest The Christian kingdoms of northern Spain emerged from Christian Visigoths and ever-independent Basques who had clung on against the early-8th-century Muslim conquest, as well as the small enclave around Barcelona established by Charlemagne in the late 8th-century. There were many tentative beginnings to the Christian reconquest of Spain; the ''Reconquista''' (718-1492). One crucial ingredient was the cult of Santiago, the apostle St James, who remains were apparently miraculously discovered in Galicia in 813, even though he was martyred in Jerusalem. A church and then cathedral were built over the spot, Santiago de Compostela, which rapidly became the third-most popular medieval pilgrimage destination after Rome and Jerusalem. The reconquest was a stuttering affair, conducted by a tangled sequence of emerging, merging and demerging Christian states that were as often at war with each other, rather than with the Muslims. They nibbled away successfully whenever the Umayyad Caliphate (756-1031) was distracted by internal problems, only for the territory to invariably be lost again. Nevertheless, good relations were as often maintained with Muslim Cordoba in order to survive. It was largely through this tolerant coexistence of Christians and Muslims, here in Spain as well as in Norman Sicily, that Christendom received knowledge of the learning and science of the Muslim world. The blackest moment for the Christians came at the end of the 10th-century, when the great Arab conqueror al-Mansur (d. 1002) sacked Barcelona in 985, Leon in 988, and even the great cathedral city of Santiago de Compostela in 997. However, within a few decades the Christians had rallied as the Muslims fell into disunion. In 1031, Moorish mercenaries rebelled against their masters and brought about the end of the Umayyads. This coincided with the arrival of reforming Cluniac monasteries in Spain. These monks were not as impressed with Muslim grandeur as the Spanish had been, and there began to emerge the more militant form of Christianity that would increasingly characterise Europe between the late-11th and 13th centuries. While anarchy reigned in Islamic Spain, the Christians made significant advances to the south, notably seizing Toledo in 1085, the former Visigoth capital. The event sent a shockwave throughout the peninsula, and evoked a Muslim response. A new religious fervour entered the Muslim side too when the a Moorish dynasty from North Africa was intived into Spain, the Almoravid Sultanate (1062-1145). These western Sahara tribesmen had an exceptionally strict interpretation of Islam, and through religious zeal had already come to dominate all of north-western Africa, centred in Marrakech. With Spain newly unified under the Almoravids, they won a decisive victory at the Battle of Sagrajas (October 1086), and rapidly overrun much of the territories recently gained by the Christians. Only on the east coast were the Muslims significantly challenged by the buccaneering exploits of Rodrigo Diaz (d. 1099), known even in his own day as El Cid; he took the city of Valencia for himself in 1994, deep in Muslim territory, and his family held it for eight years. Although the Almoravids brought a short-term period of resurgence, they also disturbed the stability of Muslim Spain where religious tolerance of the large Christian minority had long been the policy. Although the luxury of Muslim life in Spain would eventually soften them somewhat, this just prompted another group from North Africa with an even more literal interpretation of Islam to overthrow them, the Almohad Sultanate (1147–1269). This provided another opportunity for the Christians to expand again. Rise of the Muslim Seljuk Turks By the early 11th-century, the Abbasid Caliphate (750–1258) was increasingly characterised by regional powers, some nominally loyal to Baghdad, and others openly hostile such as Shi'a Fatimid Egypt. Meanwhile, a new powerfully disruptive force was on the rise in the east; the '''Turks'. The high plateau of Mongolia, the original homeland of both Turks and Mongols, is rivalled only by Scandinavia as a region from which successive waves of peoples have emerged to prey upon more civilised neighbours. It lies at the extreme end of the Central Asian steppes, an unbroken highway of open grasslands, reaching all the way to Europe. Unlike the sudden eruption of the Mongols in the 13th-century, the emergence of successive wave of Turks was a gradual and largely uncharted process. Renowned as mounted archers, it is only when Turks acquire power in some region that they can be glimpsed on the historical record. The mysterious Khazar Khaganate (650-969), which dominated the region north of the Black Sea and Caspian Sea, and long served as a buffer state between the Byzantine Empire and other steppe nomads; they are also said to have fought as mercenaries for both the Muslims and Tang Chinese at the Battle of Talas (751). In subsequent centuries, Turks to the east of the Abbasid Caliphate gradually succumbed to the powerful influence of Islam, and began to play an increasingly important role in frontier defences. Excellent fighters and well-placed to advance their own interests, they frequently took the opportunity. By 977, a Turkish general called Sabuktigin (d. 997) had seized control of Ghazni (in modern day Afghanistan); the Ghaznavid Sultanate (977-1186). His brilliant son, Mahmud (d. 1030), turned this tiny provincial city into the wealthy capital of an extensive empire, by raiding and looting the Indian subcontinent; in the process establishing the first firm Muslin foothold in India. With the Ghaznavids focused on India, the western part of their empire was wrestled away by another Turkish tribe led by Tughril Beg (d. 1063); the founder of the Seljuk Turkish Empire (1037-1194). Centre in the border region between modern Iran and Afghanistan, Tughril Beg looked west for even greater prizes. At this time Persia was ripe for conquest, ruled by many petty princes, constantly warring with one another. The Seljuks slowly and methodically fought their way westwards through Persia, and by 1054 were contending Anatolia with the Byzantines. Sensing an opportunity to reunite the Muslim world, Abbasid Caliph Al-Qa'im (1031-75) invited Tughril Beg to enter Baghdad in 1055. and agreed with him an astonishing understanding. The Abbasids would retained the overall leadership of the Muslim world with the religious title of Caliph, while the Seljuks would assume the political and military leadership as Sultan. The Seljuk Turks were also given an ambitious task; to crush the Shi'a Fatimid and bringing Egypt back into the Sunni fold. This was beyond the powers of Tughril Beg, and his still somewhat unruly Turkish tribesmen. But for the next two generations the Seljuks retained control in Baghdad and governed a Muslim empire restored to extensive boundaries. The Seljuk Turks played an important historical role. The fighting between the Seljuks and Fatimids naturally occurred in the border regions of Syria and Palestine, making the regular Christian pilgrimage route to Jerusalem increasingly inhospitable. At the same time, the Seljuks extended their territory into Byzantine Armenia in 1068, which prompted a response from Emperor Romanus IV (1068-71). The two armies met at the Battle of Manzikert (1071), a resounding victory for the Seljuks and a major turning point in the story of the Byzantine Empire. Then, upon the death of the third Seljuk Suntan, Malik-Shah I (1072-92), the Seljuq Empire fell into chaos, as rival successors and regional governors carved up the empire and waged war against each other. Sensing an opportunity to regain lost territory but in need of military muscle, Byzantine Emperor Alexios I (1081-1118) wrote a faithful letter to Pope Urban II (1088-99) appealing for Western support. What he undoubtedly expected was some mercenaries that he could control. What he got, was the First Crusaders. Category:Historical Periods